The detail of a Barbie torso reveals thin arms barely
connected and a pinched waist that is as exaggeratedly thin as the Venus of
Willendorf is fat. Barbie has prominent breasts and impossibly tiny feet. Modeled
after a 1950’s sex toy, the Lilli, made for men in Germany, the Barbie doll met
with some wariness in American mothers. My own mother refused to let my sister and I have one. Created in 1959, three years before I was born, the Barbie
by Mattel was the first 3-dimensional adult doll made for children. In the
first year alone Mattel sold 300,000! Since then the vinyl doll has been in robust production. The company notes that in the 1990's two
Barbies were sold every second world wide. Perhaps you have one?
One evening
when I was five, our babysitter gave us her whole collection, which included a wardrobe, etc. and we convinced our mother we couldn't not accept the gift.
My Barbie came with a tiny book
titled, How to Lose Weight. Inside
it’s only recommendation was “Don’t eat”.
I was enthralled by her long blond hair, her wide eyes,
her perfect ski-jump nose and her impossibly tiny feet and waist. She was my
Venus. She was the epitome of female beauty. The problem was when I looked in
the mirror I saw a dark haired, dark eyed girl of Jewish descent. I got my Barbie...and that was probably the beginning of internalizing the shortcomings of my own body.
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